art history giveaway!

For those of you who like art (or film documentaries), I'm holding a really fantastic giveaway on my art history blog. Click here to see more details about the giveaway, or click on the button in my sidebar. This giveaway is open to anyone, so please feel free to tell your friends about it!

alaska cruise: victoria

The last stop in our cruise was Victoria, BC. I've never been to Canada (besides a quick trip to Niagara Falls many years ao), so this was exciting for me. My high school choir went to Victoria (and toured Buchtart Gardens) during my junior year, but my parents didn't let me go on that trip. (I still don't understand my parents' reasoning for why I couldn't go. I could elaborate on the subject, but let's pretend like I've gotten over that disappointment, shall we?)

Anyhow, about eleven years after my high school friends, I finally got to visit Butchart Gardens when we docked in Victoria. It was really beautiful and fun.

The blue poppies were some of my favorite flowers that we saw. These rare flowers were discovered in 1922 on Mount Everest.

Can anyone identify this flower for me? It looks like a zinnia from far away, but one realizes that the petals are actually small flowers on closer inspection. We couldn't find a picture of this flower in our guidebook, nor could we find a staff member to help us. I love these flowers, though. I want to try and grow them in my garden...once I identify them.

In case you're wondering, I conscientiously decided to wear flowery ruffles on the day that we visited the gardens.

One of the most dramatic, spectacular moments at the garden (for the visitor) is at this point. The visitor winds around a dark path, which suddenly opens to reveal this vista of the "Sunken Garden" below. The Sunken Garden was once an abandoned limestone quarry - and the transformation of the space seems almost magical.

And that was the last part of our cruise. We arrived in Seattle the next morning. Sam was fully outfitted with his marine-themed clothes, as a last tribute to our fun trip:

alaska cruise: ketchikan and sam's b-diddy

When we woke up on this day of the cruise, we immediately donned hats and took the following picture:

Sam turned two years old while we were on vacation, and his main concern was that he needed to wear a party hat on his birthday. Although he did take his hat off and on throughout the day, he did wear the hat for part of the time that we visited Ketchikan.

We weren't allowed to have open flames on the ship, so we had Sam blow out candles while we visited a park in Ketchikan. He asked us to relight the candles (and sing "Happy Birthday") about six or seven times.

It was a strange experience visiting Ketchikan. This town is rather poor and not in very good condition - and it felt strange to be tourist (from an extravagant cruise ship) in the town. In one sense, I almost felt guilty being there; it was like I arrived to gawk at the poverty and simple life of the town. And at the same time, I was glad that I could be there and help bring a little bit more money into their struggling economy.

One of the things I found most interesting was this totem pole, which has a huge undecorated portion. This undecorated portion is a symbol of high habitat (for the fabled bird at the top of the pole, I assume) and also marks the high status for the clan crest. I'm not an expert on totem poles, but I'm interested to see how many other undecorated poles exist.

To end Sam's birthday, we walked into our stateroom to see that the attendants had left Sam a special surprise: a towel folded into the shape of a monkey. Although the washcloth/head of the monkey fell off after a few minutes, Jer re-capitated the chimp so that Sam could have a little conversation with his new friend (see clip below). Sam loves this video, and cracks up every time he watches the last few seconds of the clip.

alaska cruise: skagway and glacier bay

When we arrived in Skagway, we took a train up the mountain pass that was originally followed by gold-seekers during the Klondike Gold Rush. It was interesting to learn from our guide that John Nordstrom was one of the gold-seekers who made a small fortune. He earned enough money to start his shoe store business, which eventually evolved into the well-known department store. We also learned that the Klondike gold-rush trail was so densely packed in places (see an old photograph here), that if someone stepped off of the trail for a moment, it could take up to 3 1/2 hours before a space would open up again in the trail traffic.

If you look closely, you can see me and Sam sitting on the train. J loved the old-school typeface on the train cars.

After about thirty minutes on the train, Sam got bored and asked to watch a video on J's iPod. He wanted to watch "Thomas the Train." I love that "Thomas the Train" was more exciting than the actual train. Oh, the irony.

A view from the train

The next day our cruise boat toured around Glacier Bay National Park. It was so amazing to see the large glaciers up-close, and to observe how the ice had shaped the land. Pictures don't do justice to this experience. There was even a little bit of calving on some glaciers while we were there, which was neat to see. I was hoping to hear a loud crack when the ice broke off, but we weren't privy to such drama.

In front of the Margerie Glacier

An interesting juxtaposition of the cruise ship deck and the Margerie Glacier. It makes humans (and cruise tourists) seem rather silly, don't you think?

This is one of my favorite photos that J took on our trip. We saw so many different colors of blue water while we were on our trip, and the turquoise color at Glacier Bay was stunning. I think the turquoise is highlighted nicely against the red color of the boat.

That night, we dressed up and had a fancy dinner in one of the restaurants. We celebrated Sam's "very sad day" - it was his last day of being one year old.

On our way back to the stateroom, after dinner. I thought this was a fun shot of us in our dressy clothes

Each night, the stateroom attendants would fold a towel into a little animal. Sam loved these little friends. He lay on the bed and chatted with this mouse for quite a while.

alaska cruise: juneau

Well, we did it. We finally went our first real vacation since Sam was born. (Sorry, extended family members: we love to visit you, but there is a difference between traveling to visit family and going on a vacation with sightseeing and exploring). We decided that this would be a good time to go on a 7-day cruise to Alaska, partially because the cruise boat left from a Seattle port. Although we think that we'll live in Seattle for a while, we still wanted to take advantage of the nearby port (just in case we end up moving elsewhere in the next few years). And, plus, we just really needed a vacation. This year has been really busy for us, and we needed a break (and some time together).

It was really fun to have Sam with us on the cruise. I firmly believe that family vacations should be a time when our family can create shared memories and experiences - and I wanted Sam to be part of the experience. We'll continue to show him pictures so he can remember the fun time we had together.

And I have to admit, having the responsibility of caring (and playing!) with my kid made me feel a little less like an indulgent cruise tourist. Don't get me wrong: it was fun to be waited on and to not have to cook (yay!). But I liked feeling a little grounded by having some responsibility - I couldn't do whatever I wanted at any given moment, which was refreshing in a way. Does that make sense?

I'm planning on posting some pictures from our trip on Facebook, but I wanted to also post some of my favorites here (which I'll do in a series of posts). J took a lot of beautiful, artistic photos, but I think I'll let him post those on his own Facebook page. Hopefully I won't bore people with multiple posts of our vacation. This trip was a big deal for us, and I want to remember the fun things we did.

The boys at sea

Sitting in the lap of luxury

Squished in our very small stateroom (we tried to travel as cheaply as possible)

When we got to Juneau, we hiked the Mount Roberts trail. I think this hike was one of my favorite things that we did on this trip. Sam insisted on hiking for a good portion of the way - he wanted to stand on the top of each rock in the trail (he called them "mountains") and have J take his picture

I didn't think the city of Juneau was too interesting - it seemed like it was mostly full of dated, box-like architecture from the mid-20th century. But the mountains surrounding Juneau were beautiful. You can see some of the mountains and waterway (which our ship followed to arrive in the city) in the background. I didn't realize this, but there are no intercity roads which connect to Juneau. Everything that arrives in this city has to travel by barge.

The "snowcrooks" in the trees are caused by the weight of the snow in the winter. The whole mountainside was full of trees with snowcrooks.

You can see more of the city from this angle. Also, in the background is a wooden cross. It's a memorial for Father Brown, a parish leader who helped up build the trail in the early 1900s. Brown also established the first the Boy Scouts troop in Juneau.

watershed park = not so great

The sun has come out! I feel like we've been living under gray skies for weeks on end, and I was starting to get rather grouchy. Luckily, not only was today gorgeous outside, but we had enough free time to go outside for a bit.

We tried to go and explore Morningside Park, but we couldn't find a way to actually get to the park area. It's surrounded by private homes and complexes, and we couldn't really find any trailheads or parking areas. We'd like to visit Yarrow Point/Morningside Park another time though (it sounds like an interesting area - Native Americans originally used the area as a fishing camp), so we'll have to follow these directions the next time we want to go again.

Instead, we ended up driving to another nearby park for a hike instead. Watershed Park wasn't that exciting. The trails were muddy and the views weren't very scenic. There even were some areas that smelled rather bad, and we wonder if it had anything to do with the hundreds of mushrooms that were growing in the area. Blech. We walked a small loop area of 1.5 miles, but unforunately a good portion of that walk is close to the freeway. We definitely didn't feel like we were experiencing nature at its finest.

I don't think we will be visiting Watershed Park again. But hey, we did get to see some sunshine today, which was nice. Let's hope the sunshine sticks around.

the music man

At this point, it looks like Sam is training to become the next One Man Band in Mary Poppins. Dick van Dyke would be proud. Sam is obsessed with musical instruments right now, and imagines that all types of everyday objects are actually instruments. He pretends that drinking straws are flutes, and the handles on Gram's exercise bike are either flutes or trombones.

Lately, Sam has been perfecting a rendition of "Hey Diddle Diddle" (as played on his red Alphabet Pal caterpillar, see picture and video). You can kinda sorta pick out the words to the nursery rhyme, as he sings along in the clip below. (And, just so you know, he keeps running to the fridge in order to point to a "Hey Diddle Diddle" picture that he colored.) He's obviously interested in the combination of musical and visual experiences, like his daddy and uncle.



We recently purchased a plastic trumpet and recorder for Sam, which was partially necessitated by Sam's realization that his yellow toy kaleidoscope didn't have a handle like real trumpets. In this clip (sorry it's turned sideways), I'm playing the kaleidoscope trumpet behind the camera, while Sam plays the "real" trumpet.


Here's a picture of the Pied Piper on his recorder:


Luckily for Sam, he has a daddy who is more than willing to jam with him. They've had countless jam sessions since their first one last year. Sam hounds J to play the guitar or the double bass (which he also calls "Big Cello") just about every night. And here's the latest picture of their musical collaboration:

Like father, like son.